Edna O'Brien James Joyce and Byron in Love

She is an extraordinary writer, with an immense gift of language. Couple that with two incredible authors and you have two insightful books. These are part of a biography series called Penguin Lives, are generally smaller/condensed works and each (so far from what I have read, these being the 5th, 6th) I find the authors are pretty obsessed and very knowledgeable about their subjects (not all authors, but fascinating people). Both of these are library books, Joyce was unfortunately marked by a previous reader which can be distracting. I found that there were so many more details I wasn't aware of, items that made their works/books more meaningful. Nuanced and insightful writing - bring your dictionary, and perhaps the OED if you are an American!